by JL Bryan
Chapter Nine
Aoide slept in her woven-grass hammock, with the doors of her rear balcony open to catch the cool breeze through the trees. She was completely relaxed, her translucent purple wings stretched out to either side of her. When the fist pounded on her front door, she startled awake.
She fluttered her wings and hopped out of the hammock, landing gently on her bare feet. The fist pounded on the door again.
“I'm coming!” she yelled. She yanked on a vine hanging from her ceiling, and the hammock folded up and pulled away into a knothole overhead.
Aoide opened the small porthole in her circular front door and looked out through the smoked-glass window. She could see out, but no one could see inside.
Her apartment was on the south trunk of a huge old sugar maple tree, the third door up. Like most fairy homes, she had a landing porch outside her front door. From there, a woven spider-silk bridge connected to the trunk's main walkpath. The walkpath itself alternated between more of the spider-silk rope bridges, little stairwells molded inside the trunk itself, and limbs trained to grow at just the right distance to serve as stairs.
Now, Aoide's view of the hustling, bustling walkpath was blocked by cold-eyed male fairies in black armor, with the Queen's Seal on their breastplates.
Aoide held her breath. This could be good news. She'd reported their instruments stolen, and maybe the Queensguard had found them. It didn't feel like good news, though. They weren't carrying any musical instruments, either, just the iron swords in the ornate scabbards at their hips.
Aoide lifted the smoked-glass window.
“Happy morning!” Aoide said. “I must have eaten a luck-clover, to have three such lovely and handsome boys on my landing porch today.”
“You are Aoide the Lutist?” asked the Queensguard fairy who stood closest to her door, in front of the other two. He had long hair the color of polished gold and glittering sapphire eyes.
“I am she,” Aoide said. “I certainly hope this is about the stolen instruments. Did you find anything?”
“Her Majesty the Queen sends you this.” He held up a black rose in full bloom.
Aoide's fingers covered her lips, but she tried not to gasp or look too frightened in front of them. A black rose could mean good fortune or ill.
He held the rose close to her face, as if expecting her to accept it on the spot.
“Oh, I cannot possibly go to court looking like this!” Aoide said. “I'm still in my sleeping-dress. And my hair!” She put a hand to the tangled violet-streak mess of her hair and backed away. “I'll be right back! Promise!”
Aoide stepped back into her sleeping room and drew the brightly painted dressing-screen across the doorway. She cranked her music box to play a song while she got ready, and then opened her rosewood clothes trunk and looked for a suitable dress. Then she noticed her sleepy, unkempt self in the round mirror on the wall. There wasn't time to fly over to the bath garden, but she needed to wash up.
She stepped out onto her back balcony to collect fresh water from her baby blue dew-pitcher flowers, and then gasped when she realized someone had landed there. One of the Queensguard fairies stood on her balcony railing with his arms crossed, quietly watching her. He'd flown over to the back of her apartment, as if they expected her to flee.
“Happy morning, good sir!” Aoide said. She tilted one of the water-filled, pitcher-shaped flowers forward to rinse her face, then brushed the water back through her hair. “Mind looking away while I dress?”
“My order is to watch this door,” he said.
“This door, and not me, then?”
“Yes.”
“Good!” Aoide slammed the pink shutters and slid the peg-lock into place.
She changed into her best dress, made of specially pressed and preserved violet petals. She stained her lips with a little elderberry juice, then raked her seashell comb through her hair until it looked sort of presentable. Then she pulled on her matching violet-petal slippers, since the Queen, joyless stickler that she was, insisted people wear shoes in her presence.
She stepped out into the front porch and smiled at the Queensguard fairy who’d first spoken to her. “I suppose I'm ready as I will be,” she told him.
He held out the black rose toward her. Aoide steeled herself, then touched her finger to the bloom.
There was a smell like burning pitch, and then she and the Queensguard fairy stood in a small, hexagon-shaped side chamber of the Queen's court. The floor tiles were hexagonal, too. The tiles just below Aoide's feet depicted a large black rose.
Porting in through one of the black rose chambers was the only way into the palace. Most visitors ported in from the guardhouse at the outer wall, located where the front gate had been before the Queen ordered it sealed. Between the outer wall and the inner complex of palace buildings lay a vast labyrinth of deadly traps and foul monsters, which no one intruder could hope to survive.
“This way.” The Queensguard fairy stepped out through an angular, arched doorway.
Aoide tried not to shiver as she followed him. She was terrified, but she didn't want anyone to see it.
They emerged into a great golden space that looked like an enormous cavern built of six-sided golden tiles, from floor to glittering roof. A thick swarm of fireflies radiated gold and purple overhead, where they lived on the pollen of flowering vines growing down from the ceiling.
Fairies came and went everywhere, dressed in their finest. Aoide and the Queensguard fairy walked up a long, wide carpet made of sewn-together rose petals, past groups of courtiers, ambassadors, merchants, costumed musicians and dancers, and more Queensguard men in their black armor. Tapestries depicted the Queen's past war victories, and the vast room was decorated with statuary and artwork from all over the realm.
Far ahead of them, at the end of the carpet, the queen's golden throne overlooked the room, atop staircases and terraces. From here, Aoide could see the glitter of her crown, and the theatrically huge skirts of her black and gold dress draped down over the terraced stairways beneath her.
Aoide was being led directly toward the Queen.
As they drew closer, Aoide could see the Queen better, her mountainous braids of midnight-black hair—which had to be a wig—sprawling over her dress like great pythons. The Queen surveyed her court with stern golden eyes and a beautiful, youthful face. Her eyes and lips were painted with black makeup, and a golden rune was painted on her cheek.
Aoide curtsied low before the Queen, nearly sitting on the floor before she rose up again.
“What have you brought me, Icarus?” the Queen's voice echoed down the terraces from her throne.
“This is the musician called Aoide the Lutist,” the Queensguard fairy replied.
The Queen's head turned toward a silver-haired, bearded elf in a dark blue cowl, who occupied a terrace below her. He wore a golden chain, on which hung a pendant with a scarab trapped in amber.
“Conjurer,” she said, “Create the Shush Bubble.”
The old elf used a staff to heave himself to his feet. The staff was a crooked length of ironwood, topped with a gleaming quartz crystal. He muttered in Old Elvish, a language Aoide didn't know. The quartz ball sparkled, and suddenly all the voices, chatter and music in the room vanished.
Aoide turned around, half-expecting to find that everyone had disappeared. The courtiers were all still there, continuing their chatting and gossip, but it was as if an invisible curtain blocked all sound.
“Aoide the Lutist,” the Queen said.
“Yes, Your Majesty?” Aoide replied.
“You reported to the Queensguard that four objects of high magic, four musical instruments, had been stolen from you. Yes?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Aoide kept her gaze low, on the Queen's yards and yards of skirts. Subjects weren't supposed to look the Queen in the eye.
“Our seer tells us these four instruments are no longer within our realm,” the Qu
een said.
Aoide didn't know what to say. “How is that possible? I thought they must have been stolen by goblins, or perhaps other musicians...”
“Their magic has departed from Faerie,” the Queen said.
Now Aoide grew nervous. They hadn't brought her here to return the instruments, but to punish her.
“As you surely know,” the Queen continued, “Allowing magic to pass out of Faerie—either on purpose, or by negligence—violates the Supreme Law. This can be punished by death.”
Aoide tried to look calm, but she was shaking with panic. What would they do to her? She would have to beg for mercy.
“My Queen,” Aoide said, falling to her hands and knees. “I do not know how this could have happened. I have not gone near the doors to the man-world.”
“Yet your instruments must have left through such doors,” the Queen said.
“Your Majesty, I am sorry. I do not understand—”
“Magic, leaking out into the man-world,” the Queen said, glaring down at Aoide. “After we have kept ourselves hidden so well, for so long. They have chased us from that world with their iron. If they bring their iron here, to our world, then where shall we hide?”
Aoide trembled, staring at the hexagon floor tile below her. “I do not know, Your Majesty.”
“You and your musical troupe are in violation of the Supreme Law,” the Queen said. “Rhodia the Harpist. The faun called Neus, player of songpipes. The ogre Skezg, bearing in mind that ogres have no legal rights under the Queen's Law anyway. The four of you must recover the stolen instruments from the man-world.”
Aoide looked up, surprised. At least she wasn't being imprisoned, or put to death. “Yes, Your Majesty. We will do all we can!”
“You will succeed,” the Queen said, “Or you will suffer the full penalty. All four of you. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“This will be done entirely at your expense, naturally,” the Queen said. “I have assigned Icarus to watch over you and make sure you resolve this matter quickly.”
Aoide looked at the sapphire-eyed fairy in black armor, and he gave her a very small smile.
“I will do as Your Majesty desires,” Aoide said. She tried not to let her relief show.
“Then we are understood,” the Queen said. “Go and do as I say.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
The old elf rapped the base of his staff on the floor, and sound flooded in again from all over the room.
Icarus took Aoide's arm to escort her away. She walked along with him, but slowly slipped her elbow from his grasp. He would lead her to one of the black-rose chambers, and there they would teleport across the deadly labyrinth surrounding the palace, to the guardhouse where the front gate had been before the Queen walled it in.
Aoide managed to look calm on the outside, but she was terrified. She had no idea what had happened, so she had no idea where to begin. But she would recover what had been stolen from her. Her life, and her friends' lives, depended on it.